“Spending time with children is more important than spending money on children”

Until our trip to Italy, I spend days with my daughter at home. As it was her holiday time, I tried to make our time together interesting and fun but without extra costs. We spent time at home playing, crafting and tried to be as much as possible outdoors, visited museums, enjoyed Wild Walks and on weekends explored National Trust places, where we had picnics and soaked in the sun.

My photos are not the best quality as were taken by phone. I simply didn’t bother to take my camera with me and wanted to relax and take the most of our time together. And we had an amazing time! However, talking about My Year Without Shopping challenge, August was far away from the best month. I had three purchases and they all happened in an Italian vintage market. Honestly, vintage markets in Italy are simply the best and I do not regret buying these – a set of stainless steel ice cream cups and silver plated salad tongs (for only 3 euros!).

I love the ice cream set because it’s stainless steel and it means that it will last forever! I often make homemade ice-cream and these will be used a lot (they are not yet polished in the photo). I also plan to use two of them as pots for my mini succulents! And the salad tool is really a one of a kind piece, so it will be treasured. But the most excited I am about the third item – large wooden vintage frames! A year ago I gifted my husband a personalised scratch off map and wanted to hand it in a living room as a statement piece as it is very special to us. However, I couldn’t find a frame anywhere – it was either too expensive or too small. My dad resized the frame to the exact size that I need and we used leftovers to make another, smaller frame – I will show you later what I will do with them both!